Wednesday, October 06, 2010

Here is my letter in response to the following invitation: "Please support President Packer in standing for truth and righteousness, sounding a clear and much-needed warning voice, and exercising his constitutionally protected freedoms despite intense intimidation. You can send an email to the Church’s Public Affairs office at owentl@ldschurch.org (we are told your email will be forwarded to Pres. Packer) or send a note or postcard to President Boyd K. Packer, 50 East North Temple, Salt Lake City, UT, 84150."

Dear President Packer:

I felt so relieved to hear your talk on homosexuality and gay marriage (although I don't think you even mentioned those two terms). I'm online a lot, and I get so frustrated by the high level of confusion and worldliness AMONG LATTER-DAY SAINTS on this issue. I've even sometimes wondered if the LDS Church was starting to soften and go politically correct, such as when Church PR announced support for Salt Lake City's gay anti-discrimination ordinance or when Elder Marlin K. Jensen seemed to apologize for the Church's involvement in Prop 8 recently in California, or at least made it sound as if we're not already bending over backwards to be as compassionate as we can without changing our doctrine and surrending our standards.
Personally, I believe that the twin assaults of pornography and homosexuality are the main keystones of Satan's final attempt to bring down the world. Abortion and drugs are bad too, of course, but porn and gayness are infiltrating and confusing even many Latter-day Saints to an unprecedented degree. He has been carefully planning and developing these two campaigns for millennia, and in the 1960s he was finally ready to say, "Release the hounds," and 40 years later they are still ripping and tearing our civilization and getting closer and closer to vital flesh and organs.

I believe he didn't tempt the Book of Mormon civilizations much with homosexuality because he didn't want it to get into the scriptures, so that he could save this abomination for his great last-days effort. If the Book of Mormon civilizations had faced this issue, they would have written about it and made it extremely clear, but the silence in latter-day scripture allows for more division and confusion among the LDS. It is so astounding how, with the gay movement and pornography, Satan has cleverly mixed together things like the black civil rights movement (which was mostly good) with the sexual revolution (which was nearly all bad), along with new technologies that can be both good and bad and can foster so much grassroots mobilization, not to mention act as a delivery mechanism for evil.

Again, thanks so much for standing up for sanity, and I feel bad about all the contention swirling around you. However, I fear that the gay issue, more than any other, will be the factor that really divides the god-fearing from the growing ranks of the secular/agnostic/atheistic in today's society, and I fear that before too long, the Mormons will be the only significant group left standing on God's side of the issue, which will bring back a nineteenth-century level of persecution on our heads.

In the nineteenth century, Mormons espoused a principle that the civilization could not abide, and the civilization eventually pressured us to abandon earthly polygamy, although we continue to hold polygamy as an eternal principle. The twentieth century was the eye of the storm, during which we grew strong and found favor and success in the world. In the twenty-first century, our host civilization is espousing a principle that Mormonism cannot abide, and I expect that the civilization will pressure us to accept gay marriage with every bit as much force as they employed to make us abandon polygamy. But I think we’re going to hold firm this time, simply because our doctrine won’t allow us to do otherwise.

8 comments:

According to Nibley, there is a subtle reference to homosexuality in the description of the anti-christ Korihor (Alma 30:18) And thus he did preach unto them, leading away the hearts of many, causing them to lift up their heads in their wickedness, yea, leading away many women, and also many men, to commit whoredoms...Nibley also mused that the time of Alma was one of great sexual perversion, because of Isabel and her commune that enticed his son Corianton. Nibley framed the Alma injunction against Corianton that that such things are next to murder to be referring to these practices, not to two youngsters in love that can't control themselves. I think you can find these comments in his BofM class transcripts.

But that is not what I wanted to write about--I wanted to say that I listened to Elder Packer's talk online yesterday and transcribed the words, "In the righteous exercise of the Power as in nothing else, we can come close to our Father in Heaven. The Power is not an incidental part of the plan of salvation, it is the key, the very key. When we use this Power, we forever determine what we will become." Forgive me if I did not transcribe exactly, but I think I caught the gist of it. This is heady doctrine but deeply Mormon. I have often remarked that the Creator seemed to give humans an extra abundance of sexual desire, and my only explanation is that he wanted to see what we would do with it. How will we spend it. Elder Packer concisely said it will determine forever who we will become. Like you, others have commented that they feel a time of persecution coming. Perhaps this is why this last conference taught so much about seeking the Holy Spirit. I have wondered if it will center on the LDS stand on marriage, homosexuality, and family. Since you've been reading The Coming Calamity (shameless self promotion--buy it a greenjacketbooks.com) you can start to understand the tremendous demographic problems created by single parents, abortion, and, in general, the decline of marriage. These social ills are becoming economic ills, and may heighten persecution in the coming years. In short, bravo for your stand. Alan Mitchell

If we believed so much in "free agency" by rejecting Satan's Plan and pledged ourselves to building temples dedicated to the exhalation of the family through celestial marriage, why do we really care about civil marriage? Canada and the various US states who have taken a more libertarian approach haven't gone to hell in a hand basket.

Bro. Packer and others are welcomed to their views on homosexuality. Having read Bishop David Eccles-Hardy's letter some years ago and pondered it prayerfully, I have to state emphatically that I no longer share that view. I know our religion worships conformity but on this issue, it hasn't be conformed in many years. Still, my only objection is the near endorsement of baring those different from us equal protection under the law. What a dangerous precedence that sets. Having been victimized by this very issue in our early days, you would think we wouldn't be so jolly about doing it to someone else.

The Lord brought up this land for a special purpose. Only in a climate of liberty and freedom could the gospel be restored. Now that it is, are we going to turn our backs on those very things that made it all possible? Live and let live. Allow them the dignity we take for granted. Truth and righteousness has nothing to fear. Just look at the mess in the middle east. That's what happens when you try to legislate morality.

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About Me

I'm the author of seven books on Mormonism, including Mormon-themed humor and fiction. I'm the great-great-great-grandson of a Mormon apostle who had more than forty wives. I served an LDS mission in Melbourne, Australia, and worked as an editor at the LDS Church's official Ensign magazine. A graduate of Emerson College and Brigham Young University, I cofounded and edited the Mormon literary magazine Irreantum and the satirical Mormon newspaper The Sugar Beet. A Hodgkin's disease survivor and the oldest of ten siblings, I live with my wife and five children in Provo, Utah.